Folksy Friday

It's good to see that the creativity is still going strong out there! The theme this week is rosemary, which I have just spent this morning taking cuttings from. Our last one didn't last the winter and I am determined to have many before we face the next...

This first is from Alexis Southam and is properly beautiful. A real statement piece.

This soap is from Handmade Soap by Caroline and looks so pretty in the picture. 

And finally, this one from Caractacus Pots. It's a bit of a cheat, but the product description recommends baking cheese with rosemary, which I have every intention of trying, very soon!

Returning hero

Possibly overstating the case a bit!

I feel I owe apologies for blog neglect over the past few weeks. There should be a word for that - idleblog maybe, or soggyblog.

In all honesty, I'm not sure where the time has gone to, other than I have had a pile of stuff head out the door and little time to take stock. While that's great, it is nice to come up for air every now and again. With the long easter and royal weekends now on the horizon, there is still lots to be getting on with too.

All that said, I thought it was high time I reported back on a couple of recent projects. I have had a flurry of requests for 'name' bunting and have made four or five strings in the past couple of weeks. Plus I have made another batch of royal wedding bunting, some big bunting for a bedroom (big to me in comparison to all the mini bunting, normal to everyone else I suspect!) and a changing bag as a gift for a friend (pictured). This last one owes a big credit to the pattern I downloaded from sew4home.com which has a real treasure trove of free downloads. They can also be used commercially as long as they are namechecked, which seems eminently fair enough to me. I may make a couple for sale, as it went down very well with the mum-to-be.

Next up it is gardening - no income here, but the rewards when looking gazing over the brim of an iced G&T are infinite!

Hope everyone is well and enjoying the sunshine :-)

Folksy Friday

This is my first Folksy Friday and I hope you like these things as much me.

We had a lovely drive through the countryside yesterday and we were lucky enough to see a partridge standing beautifully by the side of the road. They are really stunning birds and it is great to see some people doing them creative justice :-)

This is a lovely one isn't it? There is something almost Christmassy about it (although not a pear tree in sight).

It is by Dee Beale and she has a couple of other in her folksy shop"
http://www.folksy.com/shops/deebeale

This is a beautiful brooch too and looks almost like a biscuit...
I rarely wear brooches but as this doesn't have hugely strong colours I can imagine it being  very easy to wear.

It is by Jude Allman:
http://www.folksy.com/shops/judeallman






Last but far from least is this beautiful cushion from Helkatdesign. I love the little flock and the purposeful step!

Helkatdesign can be found here:
http://www.folksy.com/shops/helkatdesign

Pincushions

I am doing a craft fair in the summer and hope to book a few more for the Autumn, so I have started to stockpile a few of these. I have spotted them in quite a few Folksy shops so I don't think I'll put them online, but hopefully they will go quite easily as a low cost option at a fete.

I have a couple of ideas for slightly different ideas and I hope these will get on to Folksy in due course.

In the meantime, these have proved fab for doing something productive on the days when I feel uninspired. A bit of sewing, stuffing and buttoning later and bingo, something is finished.

Packaged and ready

This week has been a busy one getting everything organised for a new venture, working with a lovely local craft shop and gallery here in Norwich:  Grapevine

I popped into the shop earlier this week (which is well worth a visit by the way, lots of lovely goodies) and asked if they thought bunting would be of any interest to their customers. After being very patient with me having no idea about how all this works, they were generous enough to give it a go! So you can now find a range of Says Alice mini-bunting in Grapevine, which, for me at least, is very exciting indeed :-)

Luckily I had quite a few strings ready to go, but I did have to think about the packaging a bit. I had some cellophane card wrappers which worked perfectly for the mini bunting, but I played with other ideas too. It would be nice to rely less on plastic, but as I had these and they fitted well, I ended up with the cellophane and will review it when I have more time (and inspiration).

The big bunting wouldn't squash stylishly into anything that I have at all, so I have ordered some new wrappers which will hopefully fit them better. Fingers crossed for Monday.

Hope you all have a fab weekend! I'm off to bake a birthday cake for a party at the weekend...

You don't have to look far...

... to find something lovely at the moment.

These were tightly, tightly closed when I got them last Friday and now look, they are blowsy, big and beautiful. Didn't take them long to get going.

I have them on the windowsill for this photo but they have been sitting next to me on the sideboard, close to where I do most of my sewing. Thinking about it, I ought really to have some extras beside the computer which is where I seem to be spending a fair percentage of my time, but that would require forward planning...

I have just noticed that if you look very carefully you can see a black tub of daffs outside the window too, which are still just spikes of small leaves. They were planted in tubs last year and then buried, as they were put in a bed which needed a 'big dig'. We finally got the energy to do the digging last week, so the daffs in tubs are awaiting replanting. I'm thinking the view from the desk might just need cheering up.

Lots of sewing to do today plus some exiting things for Says Alice. I'll report back!

Spring is open for business

Well, it is here anyway!

Just as we start to get the garden ready to face the year, it seems that we have been overtaken by things springing into life around us. The grasses are growing back, the asters are showing signs of life and the daffodils won't be far behind the snowdrops at this rate.

After another weekend of shifting oak leaves, one mountain at a time, and we finally felt safe enough to take the cover off the pond and the newts rewarded us by coming up to have a stare (probably to get air, but as the fish were entirely unmoved I like to think something was paying attention to our efforts!).

In honour of spring, the pic is my 'spring greens' bunting which is over on the folksy shop. It is also the first one to have a sale which is VERY EXCITING! Have I said that loudly enough? Brace yourself, I'll say it again - VERY VERY EXCITING!!

It was also featured in a lovely folksy friday entry on a blog called Blingery, which I must figure out how to do...

For now, I hope you are all starting to feel some of the joys of spring too :-)

Snowdrops

Aren't these lovely?

Some signs went up last week for a 'snowdrop walk' at Keswick Old Hall, which is just about walkable from our house. We had guests to stay over the weekend so we didn't really plan to be able to get there. But we found ourselves with the opportunity so we pulled on our boots (still with clods of murmurating mud stuck to them) and wandered out, arriving 5 minutes before they packed up their slices of cake and went home.

The Hall itself is beautiful and with a great history all intertwined with the big Norfolk families, particularly the Gurneys. There was all kinds of sueing for causing things like 'emotional estrangement from wife'. Brilliant.

The chap who owns it now opens it for the snowdrop walk every year for charity, this year was St Johns Ambulance. The gardens go down into the woods by the river and were absolutely chock full of snowdrops - really, really beautiful. Despite our late arrival, we were made really welcome and followed a very well worn trail so there had obviously been plenty of people there during the day.

There were also tea and cakes and, being late, we helped them use up what was left... HUGE slices of coffee cake and chocolate cake, shortly followed by the need to walk the long way home to burn of a few of the calories.

Overal, it was a great reminder that you don't have to go far or make complicated plans to find something lovely . Hope you all had a lovely weekend too :-)

This has been an exciting week in the world of says alice...

I have finally made good on my threats and set up a little shop on Folksy. I know it is only a success after I have made a few sales and a bit of a reputation for great quality work and service, but just getting it up and running feels like a great leap forward.

I have made four different strings of mini-bunting to stock it with to start with. The royal wedding bunting has gone on (pictured here), and some greens and blues and reds. It's mini bunting so it is designed to fit mantle pieces and shelves, but, if I do say so myself, very cute indeed :-)

Check me out at www.folksy.com/shops/saysalice

Watch out, I'll be on Dragon's Den next!

Getting in line

You can always tell when I have been on a sewing roll, because my pins get all lined up in an orderly file.

This means I have been using them all at once, run everything through the machine in a batch and got into a real rhythm of putting them away in the tub next to the machine.

I have developed a real preference for these pins as well, probably because a lot of the fabric I have been using lately is patterned and the little metal pins blend in far too easily. These coloured pins were the cheapest of the cheap from IKEA and (now all the blunt ones have been weeded out) they are the ones I always grab out of the sewing box.

The sewing blitz is because of the plans for the new folksy shop that I hope to get up and running in the next few weeks. The bunting is now all stocked up and I have a few other things coming together as well. Only a half day to work on it today so I'll do some cutting out I think.

Hope all is well out in the blogosphere. Hope your pins aren't as OCD as mine!